Tuesday, November 10, 2015

IT News Head Lines (Techradar) 10/11/2015

Your Android phone can now help cure cancer while you sleep
Remember the Folding at Home app on the Playstation 3? The app that used your gaming console to help solve some pretty nasty diseases while you weren't playing?
Well,
Australian scientists at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research a new
Android app that offers a similar promise for your smartphone.
When
your phone is plugged in and charged to at least 95% battery overnight,
the DreamLab app will kick into gear, downloading and solving a small
part of a cancer research problem without any effort on your part.
The
idea is that by pooling together thousands – if not millions – of idle
smartphones across the country, the Institute will be able to help solve
complex tasks in cancer research significantly faster than before.

Data for science

With
the ever-present fear of exceeding data allowances almost ubiquitous
for Australians, the biggest hurdle the DreamLab app faces is one of
confronting the data challenge.
Fortunately, the app offers users
limits on how much data the app can consume each month, both on your
mobile network and on WiFi.
What's more, thanks to a three-year
association with the Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone has unmetered the
data used by the DreamLab app, so it won't count against Vodafone
customer's data allowances.
You can download the free DreamLab app here.

Stan officially arrives alongside Netflix and Presto on Telstra TV
One of the biggest selling points of the Telstra TV is that it's the first streaming box to offer all three of Australia's major SVOD services in one place, with Netflix, Presto and a Stan placeholder app pre-installed from the outset (sorry, Quickflix – we said 'major').
Well, you can scratch the placeholder app, because a proper Stan app is now available for Telstra's rebadged Roku device.
Existing Stan subscribers can simply login to their updated Stan app to instantly start watching the service's stellar content lineup, though new customers will have to sign up on Stan's website.
As
an added bonus, Telstra customers who register their Telstra TV boxes
before December 25 will receive three months of free Stan.
The
addition of Telstra TV to its list of compatible devices is just another
example of Stan's commitment to being on as many devices as possible,
having recently launched its app on PlayStation consoles and Samsung Smart TVs.

How to smarten up the kid's room

Smart
home gadgets aren't just for the grown-ups. You can use these devices
to benefit the kids as well, whether it's keeping tabs on them while
they're in and out of the house or helping them with their homework.

Smart safety at home

For
kids that are too young to need their own privacy, installing a smart
security camera like the Belkin NetCam HD+ offers multiple benefits.
Once
it's in place, you can quickly check what the kids are up to from
another part of the house by opening the NetCam app on your smartphone
or tablet and checking out the live video feed.
The night vision
mode also works a treat for checking up on sleeping babies and toddlers,
switching to a high-visibility monochrome view courtesy of the 12
infrared LEDs that circle the camera lens.
The Belkin NetCam HD+
can perform a few other tricks, too. Using the built-in two-way
intercom, you can tell your kids to come down for dinner or stop
fighting with their siblings without having to yell up the stairs like a
crazy person.
If you catch your kids doing something
particularly adorable (or naughty), you can snap photos or videos from
the NetCam app, which are saved to your mobile device.
Since it
works over both a Wi-Fi and 3G/4G data connection, you can also set it
up as a 'nanny cam' when you've got a babysitter over to check that the
kids have gone to bed on time.

Location, location, location

But what if your kids are too old to have a video camera playing big brother in their bedroom?
You
can still keep tabs on them without stepping over the line using a
smartphone solution, and since this works both in and out of the house,
it's actually a more complete solution than the stay-at-home IP camera.
For
Apple-only households, the new location-sharing features available
since iOS 8 will keep track of where your kids are at any time. To set
up family sharing, go to Settings > iCloud and tap 'Set Up Family Sharing'.
You'll
need to confirm that you're the family 'organiser' – which essentially
means that everyone that you sign in as part of the family will be able
to use your credit card to make iTunes and App Store purchases.
Once
you're set up as the organiser, you'll need to invite other family
members to join the group. This is done by going to Settings >
iCloud > Add Family Member, however this step assumes the person
already has an Apple ID. For kids that are too young to create one, you
can set one up on their behalf by going to Settings > iCloud
> Family, tapping the small "Create an Apple ID for a child" at
the bottom of the screen, and going through the rest of the prompts.
After
your kids have accepted the Family Sharing Invitation and opted to
share their location, you'll be able to see their location at any time
by downloading the Find My Friends app. From here, you can also set up
notifications so that you get an alert whenever that family member
arrives or leaves a particular location.
If you wanted to set
this up for his school, for instance, tap on 'Notify me', tap 'Leaves'
and tap the 'Change location' link to change the location to their
school.
Google doesn't have an equivalent feature in Android, but for non-Apple households, Life360 is a decent third party alternative that works across iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

New age note taking

Modern
kids may be used to lugging laptops and tablets around, but as
convenient as these devices are, they may not be the best tools for
helping with their schoolwork.
Numerous studies have found that
handwriting, as slow as it is compared to typing on a keyboard, is
better suited for learning, as the effort of having to summarise what
the teacher is saying into written form (as opposed to speedily typing
everything out) helps cement that material in their memory. Essentially,
noting things down by hand engages the part of the brain that is
associated with memory formation more so than typing it out on a
keyboard.
Up till now, tablet manufacturers like Microsoft and its Surface Pro 4
have tried to recreate the handwriting experience on a touchscreen, but
these still lag significantly behind the manual process.
The same can be said for Bluetooth styluses that are designed to work with iPads. This is where a device like the Livescribe 3 Smartpen comes in handy.
It
works much like a regular pen, in that you write things down on paper
(albeit specially printed Livescribe dot paper), but everything is then
wirelessly transmitted to an iOS or Android device over Bluetooth, and
from there, you can convert your handwriting to text (provided your
scribbles are neat enough), send it on to schoolmates as a PDF, or share
it with popular note-taking platforms OneNote or Evernote.
The
steep up-front price of the pen isn't the only thing you'll need to
factor in, though. You'll also need to buy special Livescribe notepads,
as the digital recognition doesn't work when you write on regular paper.
The good news is that the notepads aren't too expensive, and if
you're really skint, you can print Livescribe dot paper for free using a
laser printer.

Upgrade your paperbacks

Reading
books on paper is for amateurs. Switching to a digital solution will
not only save money (popular classics that are out of copyright can be
downloaded for free on most e-reader platforms, such as A Tale of Two
Cities by Charles Dickens, Othello by William Shakespeare, and The
Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde), but you can do more with the
text while you're reading it.
Using the Kindle app
(available iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows 10 and Mac), you can
tap and hold on any word to see its definition in a dictionary or
Wikipedia, and even translate the word to a different language.
You'll
never lose your page in a book again, as it automatically opens to the
last page you were reading, and you can also search for specific terms
in the book, which is handy if you're studying a text and need to find a
quote or theme.
Another nifty feature for studying books is
X-Ray, which shows you where key people, places and terms appear
throughout the book.

How to stream videos using VLC

VLC is pretty well known as a media player that's capable of playing just about anything.
Experienced
users, however, know that there's much more to the application:
including the ability to stream media from one device to another. You
can even stream your desktop or the input from any capture devices you
might have in your system.

Streaming videos from one device to another

We'll
start by talking about VLC's most basic streaming function: streaming
from one device with VLC installed to another device with VLC installed.
VLC is available for all the major platforms (including iOS and
Android), and you'll need it installed on both the device you'd like
stream from and any devices that you want to watch the stream on.
You'll
also need to know the local IP address of the computer you're streaming
from. If you don't know what it is, open up Windows search bar and type
cmd, which will bring up the command prompt in Windows. In the command
prompt, type ipconfig and look for your IPv4 address. We need to know
this address so that we can connect to it from the client devices.

1. Choosing a video

Open
up VLC on the device you'll be streaming from. Click on
Media>Stream (or just press Ctrl+S). The open/stream media
dialogue will open up.
Next click on the Add button, and select a
video file you'd like to stream. Click on the Stream button at the
bottom when you're done.

2. Output

The Stream Output window will appear, with the source already selected. Just click Next.
The Destination window will pop up. From the New Destination menu, select HTTP, then click on Add.
A new tab will open up for HTTP. Note the port number – 8080 by default.
If
you go back to the first tab, you can actually add additional
destinations; VLC lets you stream to multiple targets at once if you
like.
You can also check the box for Display Locally, which will have VLC display the video on the source PC as it streams it.
Click Next when you're done.

3. Conversion

The
transcoding options box will appear. VLC will convert the video on the
fly to a new format. It does this in case the target device is not
capable of playing the video being streamed.
If you're streaming
VLC to VLC, that theoretically shouldn't be necessary since if this VLC
can play the video then the other one should be as well – so you can
uncheck the Activate Transcoding box if you like.
Whichever you choose, click Next.
There's
a final confirmation window showing you the text string it will be
using for streaming. You can just click Stream to start the streaming.
The
file will start streaming. If you chose Display Locally, the VLC window
will have the video shown in it. If not, the progress bar will move,
but you won't see the video on screen.

4. Second device

Now
head to the device(s) you want to watch the stream on and fire up VLC.
As many devices as you processor and bandwidth can support at once can
view the stream.
On a mobile, tap on the Stream option. On a PC, click on Media>Open Network Stream.
You'll be given a bar into which to type the address from which to stream. Tap or click on it and type in: http://:8080
Where is the local IP address of the device that's streaming the video.
On
a mobile, VLC will actually remember previously typed addresses, so you
only need to enter them once and can just tap on them in the future to
resume streaming from the device.
On a PC, an added stream will appear in the playlist. Select it and press play to view the stream.
Because
it's a live stream (rather than a transferred file) your play controls
will be limited on the client; you can't, for example, fast forward and
rewind – though you could do that on the source PC by moving the slider
bar.

6. Playlist

On
the source PC, you'll notice that any streams you add will be added to
the live playlist (which can be saved, just like a normal playlist). You
can add more streams, restart streams, control the playback position or
start streaming something else by double clicking on it.
Essentially
what you do on the streaming PC is reflected on the playing devices in
real time. You've essentially become a live broadcaster!
Now that
you've got basic streaming down, you can experiment with more complex
streaming. By going to Capture Devices in your Stream dialogue, you can
see that you can actually live stream from a capture source on your PC –
a webcam or capture device for example.
You can also broadcast
your PC's desktop (although that's a little flaky at the moment – we had
continual crashes when we tried). Technically you can even broadcast
the input from a TV tuner, though the implementation of that is
extremely technical and not for the faint of heart.

Other apps

Technically
you don't need VLC on the client devices (the ones you're planning to
view the video on). VLC actually supports open standards for streaming
including streaming over HTTP and RTSP.
In Kodi, for example, you
can set up a source with the HTTP or RTSP protocol. So you could stream
from your desktop PC to a device (like the OSMC Raspberry Pi we talked
about last month) running Kodi alone.
You just need to add a new
video source in Kodi, with HTTP or RTSP (whichever you use in VLC) as
the protocol and the IP address and port number of the VLC PC as the
source.

How to use a VPN on Android

What with the introduction of mandatory metadata retention laws for ISPs in Australia, it's fast becoming common practice for digital citizens to employ VPNs – that is, virtual private networks – to conceal their online tracks from Big Brandis and Uncle Sam.
It's
not that I or other concerned citizens have anything to hide, it's just
that other people don't have the right to log, view, and make judgement
on every single thing I do online.
Even if you don't think that
the government will have any interest in what you're doing online, if
you use your phone at internet cafes or wifi hotspots, a VPN is a great
way to protect you from users on the same network that may have
intentions that are less than pure.
Further, if you're connecting
to an open wifi network (that is, one that you don't type in a password
to initially connect to), almost all of your data is out there floating
on the airwaves, ready to be snapped up by any machine nearby.
With
financial incentives for unsavoury characters to run packet-sniffing
apps, you'd be foolish to think that any free wifi network available to
you while travelling is just as safe as your network at home.
Thankfully,
setting up a VPN connection on Android is an easy task, but there are
still a few considerations that you need to make when doing so, which I
will guide you through now.
Before I get ahead of myself, though, I'll quickly walk you through just what a VPN is, and how it protects your privacy online.

A VP wut?

A
VPN allows you to create a private connection over a public one. This
sounds like nothing too special, but what it does is actually allow you
to route everything you send over your network through to a trusted
server via a secret, encrypted tunnel – keeping it away from prying
eyes.
Additionally, you can use VPNs to access the 'net as if
you're located somewhere that you're not to bypass any website blockages
or other filtering mandated by your local totalitarian regime.
Not
all VPN connections are the same quality, however, and when looking for
providers you'll see connections available using many technologies,
including PPTP, L2TP, IPsec, OpenVPN, and more.
Above all others, I recommend OpenVPN, as it has stood up to the most scrutiny, and is easier to implement than some of the others. It's also open source, which always makes me happy.

Choosing a VPN provider

So, now that I've convinced you of the merits of a VPN, you will need to choose one to connect to. You can peruse a list of VPN providers that take your privacy seriously.
I
hesitate to recommend any one provider in the above list over any
other, as I haven't tried them all, but I do recommend looking for one
that includes either their own Android client, or that provides config files for the official OpenVPN client for Android, as it will save you a lot of fiddlin'.
Of
course, you're not going to use the VPN exclusively on your Android
phone, either, so make sure they have access for multiple devices, and
provide clients for every platform you're interested in.
For this
guide, I'll show you how to set up a VPN for your chosen service
provider using the official OpenVPN client rather than the native VPN
support introduced in Ice Cream Sandwich, which doesn't support OpenVPN, the gold standard for VPN connections.
You
can connect to other VPN types (PPTP, L2TP, and IPSec) under Android
Settings > Wireless and Networks ( > More) > VPN.

Only partly anonymous

Keep
in mind that VPNs only encrypt your traffic up to their endpoint – the
server that you chose in the connection process. Your internet activity
can be monitored from this point onwards, so don't think that you no
longer have to rely on SSL for banking or online shopping etc.
Additionally,
all your online activity will be tied to the IP address assigned by
this server. Most VPN providers share IP addresses, so there's no way to
definitively single you out for any criminal activity undertaken by
your assigned IP address, but don't think that a VPN is a free pass to
Illicitown.

Setting up a VPN

So, first things first, visit the Play Store and download the official (and free) 'OpenVPN Connect' client (that's the one published by OpenVPN).
You'll
next need the OpenVPN config files available from your VPN provider. If
these are provided as a zip file, you'll have to extract it so that you
have files with the extension '.ovpn'.
Place those files into a
folder on your phone's storage, then, from the OpenVPN app's three-dot
menu, choose 'Import Profile from SD card', and navigate to the folder
that you placed those config files in, finally selecting the server that
you wish to connect to.
So, which one should you choose? It's up
to you – are you looking to access content blocked in your country? Then
choose a country that does have access to that content. If you're not
interested in location spoofs, then for the sake of access speed, choose
the server closest to your current location.
Once you've imported
a profile, you'll need to enter the username and password given to you
by your VPN provider. I'd tick the 'save' box, so that the next time you
connect, it will be a faster process. Connecting – both now and next
time – is just a matter of tapping the 'Connect' button from the main
screen, and telling Android that you trust OpenVPN to make a VPN
connection for you.
If you've imported multiple OpenVPN server
connections, then you can quickly choose between them from the drop-down
menu up the top of the main screen, making it a breeze to switch
between countries.
To make accessing the VPNs even faster, you can
add shortcuts to your Android homescreen. To do so, choose 'Add
Shortcut' > 'Add Connect Shortcut' from the three dot menu, then
select from the drop-down menu which connection you want as a shortcut,
give it a name – et voilà; you're just one press away from more secure
browsing.

5G incoming: Telstra pushes 1Gbps barrier
Things are about to get a whole lot faster, with Telstra claiming it has hit the very limit of what can be considered 4G.
Giving
us a tantalising glimpse of what happens when LTE is pushed, Telstra
and Ericsson have collaborated to successfully test the 1Gbps capability
of Telstra's commercial mobile network.
In a world first, the speed was achieved by aggregating 100MHz of Telstra's spectrum holdings across five separate 4G channels.

LTE limits

While
1Gbps is still classed as 4G, the global consensus considers it the
absolute pinnacle of what 4G can be. Now that Telstra has reached this
limit, anything beyond will be 5G.
To provide a sense of just how
quick 1Gbps really is, Telstra currently offers customers speeds that
max out at 450Mbps for mobile devices, and 600Mbps for mobile hotspots.
Mark
Wright, Telstra's Group Managing Director of Networks, claims the
company still has work to do, but promises "the days of commercial 1Gbps
services in the market are coming."

Visualisation for business

This year has seen many developments in visualisation technology – from holograms
to virtual reality headsets – designed to excite the senses and usher
in a new paradigm of personal entertainment. Also exciting is the
potential visualisation brings to many business processes still stuck in
the doldrums of plain text and voice interaction.
Visualisation
can be broadly defined as technology that brings a visual dimension (2
or 3D) to information or an object that is described as non-visual data
or a physical object. Visualisation allows an object to been seen
without physically being there with the help of computer modelling.
As
computing power advances, visualisation will become more accessible
from the cloud to smartphones and wearables. In the medical industry
alone, Research and Markets forecasts the global advanced visualisation
market to grow at more than 10 per cent each year reaching some $2.8
Billion in value by 2020.
Here, we'll look at the technology of
visualisation and how organisations are adopting it to dramatically
change the way they do business – both internally and for their
customers.

2015: A leap year for visualisation

With the Google Glass
smart eyewear showcasing the potential for visualisation over the past
few years its sun setting this year seemed to trigger a burst of product
development from a range of tech vendors: Microsoft announced HoloLens; Samsung released its Gear VR headsets; and Sharp released an interactive whiteboard for the office meeting room.
In
addition to devices for augmented and virtual reality, this year has
heralded new ways to turn mind-boggling volumes of data into patterns
which can be "seen" and acted upon.
Matthew Golab, legal
technology manager at Gilbert + Tobin Lawyers, says with typically
litigation or regulatory matters running into the hundreds of thousands
of documents, the use of visual network diagrams provides an overview of
the universe, or of a subset.
"We also use visual breakdowns of type of document coupled with chronological views to sample the documents," Golab says.
Augmented reality and facilities like the UTS Data Arena
are excellent tools for exploring data sets, but the future of
visualisation lies in the ability to select visuals which will
communicate an anomaly or an interesting trend to a user, according to
Premonition.io managing director Brad Lorge.
"With the advent of
smart watches, Google Glass and even smartphone notifications, apps need
to be able to communicate complex trends and events incredibly
concisely. The ability to understand what exactly to emphasise is the
key," Lorge says.

Applying imagination

The application of
visualisation is only limited by imagination and practicality, and more
often than not, will result in better understanding of information and
more innovation.
Zip Industries, a local manufacturer of office
hot water systems, has adopted 3D visualisation as a core part of its
assembly and ERP processes as it is easier for people to see the volume
of a component in 3D compared with a flat image.
When I met the
company's CIO, Nick Mennell, he was spearheading an initiative to use 3D
modelling to demonstrate products "in place" to potential customers as
visualisation stretches from manufacturing and ERP to sales and
marketing. An easy ROI for the company is to use 3D modelling to
eliminate travel time to prospects and field photography.
While
visualisation is making waves this year, it's worth noting that the
Queensland Police Service has been using virtual reality for training
since as far back as 2003. Education and training is another area which
can benefit greatly from visual interaction.

The benefits of real time visualisation

All eyes on real-time data visualisation

Every
business deals with some form of data set – from financial accounts to
server monitoring – but the big challenge is turning raw data into
real-time intelligence and that's where visualisation can make a huge
difference.
Ben Phillips, principal research fellow at the
University of Canberra's National Centre for Social and Economic
Modelling, says visualisation offers many advantages, not least a
simpler way to understand data.
"When people have a visual
interface they can quickly understand large data sets," Phillips says.
"We find using a spreadsheet can be a confusing array of numbers, but a
more visual approach is a lot easier and more functional. Most people
find a visual interface more appealing to understand the business, more
intuitive and flexible."
The centre provides clients with visual
interfaces which allows people to change dimensions of tables on fly so
they can do analysis themselves for real-time data visualisation.
Phillips says people often discover new opportunities for improvement
when performing their own analysis.
"It's fairly early days for
visualisation in Australia, but it is promising a better way to
understand data to uncover problems in business and government," he
says.
An example of real-time data visualisation is displayed by
Finnish organisation Lucify which has created an interactive data
visualisation of Europe's current migration crisis based on data from
the UN and other sources.
Hover over Germany and you'll see the
path and number of people heading into the country represented by
arrows. Lucify's self-stated mission is to foster collaboration on
interactive data visualisation for journalism.
Peter Gray,
director of analytics and information service at Oakton, says
visualising data can allow people to easily gain insights into what is
really happening.
"For example, in a shopping centre, by
overlaying retail sales and foot traffic data over a map of the centre,
you can clearly see the different people movements and spending patterns
which then allows you to optimise store mix and rental agreements,"
Gray says. "By then delivering this on a geo-spatially aware mobile
device, you're able to stand in a particular part of the centre and see
what the returns are from the different stores, and put that information
into context."
We're just at the start of a new era in
visualisation for business. More readily available equipment and cloud
services coupled with applications and use cases will drive a new
appetite for innovation. Don't let the legacy of text and telephone hold
your business back.

Week in Gaming: A look into the dystopian future of Activision's Candy Crush acquisition
It
was this week, exactly a decade ago, that Activision Blizzard bought
King, the studio behind Candy Crush. At the time, we didn't know what it
meant. We made jokes - hot takes, as we called them back then - about
how an Activision exec had probably left their iPad in the company of an
excitable four-year old with sticky fingers and no concept of credit
cards. We laughed. Remember what it felt like to laugh?
But now
the windows are boarded up and every crevice has been blacked out with
whatever material we had to hand: curtains, blankets, torn-up gaming
manuals. We'll never use those again. We'll never want to. We can't let
them see us, we know what they'll do.
A small, thin, sharp ray of
light scans across the room. They're outside now. We huddle, terrified,
in the corner. A knock on the door.
We freeze.
"Excuse
me," the Microtransaction Officer bellows. "Is anyone in? We have a
special offer on immunity. Two weeks for only 5.99! Limited time deal!"
My
husband looks up. "Actually," he says, "that's pretty good, isn't it?"
He starts to get to his feet. "No!" I whisper urgently. "No, please!"
He makes his way to the door as I cradle our baby in the dark. He opens it.
"Hello," beams the officer. "Very nice house you have here. How many gems did you pay for it?"
My
husband is taken in by the flattery of the officer. He gets out his
wallet. I want to stop him, but I can't risk them seeing me. I can't
risk another payment. I stupidly let our toddler play with my phone and
now I have a huge overdraft and 5,000 gold coins to show for it. I can
buy as many level skips as I want - but I can't buy a get out of jail
free card. Those literally exist now, and I'll need one if they find me.
My husband has paid the officer now. But he's not done yet.
"Thanks for your purchase," he says. "But I see your car has a dent. Would you like me to fix that?"
"No it doesn't," my husband replies. "It's completel-" but before he can finish, the officer kicks the car door in.
"Fifteen gems," he says, smiling. "Or you'll have to replace the windscreen, too."
My
husband freezes. He knows we don't have that. We saved up all our coins
back before we had little Bruce. They wouldn't have let us take him
home if we hadn't paid in full. If we were short on cash, we'd have had
to buy him back in pieces - 'DLC', they called it. Now we barely have
enough for our weekly rations, and we certainly can't afford to buy
lifelong immunity for a one-off payment of 500 gems - even if it does
come with 50 bonus gold coins for this week only.
Everyone's a
sucker for a deal, aren't they? We blew a chunk of month's income on the
new Call of Duty emotes. Just ten gems, three chocolate(TM) bar wrapper
codes and three chants of "All praise the King". Now we can't afford
the month's school fees for our second eldest. Soon we might not be able
to afford food.
I'm already working 40 hours a week at the Match
Three factory to make ends meet. The days are long. I have callouses on
my hands from all the swiping. Endless rows of coloured things in front
of my eyes have started to make my sight deteriorate.
Our
daughter, she wants to make movies. She got a job as a production
assistant at the Activision movie studio working on the next Call of
Duty Saga: Zombies Edition movie. I know it's selfish, but if she can
make a success of her life then maybe she can maybe pull us out of this
mess.
The officer sees my husband's reaction. He knows we can't pay. He reaches for his handcuffs.
"Terribly
sorry," he says. "Have to disable you. You'll be able to continue your
life again in one week." With a quick, effortless motion he injects him
in the neck. Forced coma. His third this year.
The neighbours
watch from their windows. One woman is stuffing her face from a bag and I
can barely bring myself to say it. Any mention of the word "candy" must
be immediately followed by the most uttered slogan in the land: "a
trademark of the Activision-King corporation, the great and the
almighty". It's a ritual that became enshrined in law when the patent
was secured. And yet they still can't make a decent Tony Hawk's game.
Welcome to the future now that Activision owns King.
Or, you know, things will just carry on like normal.

Introduction and design

Note: OS X 10.11 El Capitan
is now available to download onto the new MacBook from the Mac App
store. It introduces loads of new features including a split-screen
view, a Spaces Bar and under-the-hood performance improvements. To find
out if OS X 10.11 El Capitan is a worthy upgrade, check out our OS X 10.11 El Capitan review.Also: Black Friday is nearly here! If you're looking to grab yourself Apple's 12-inch MacBook on the cheap, make sure you check out our cheap MacBook deals for Black Friday page.Original article follows...
Knock it for its USB Type-C
port. Bash it for its wimpy horsepower. But don't even try to deny that
Apple's new MacBook is one of the most attractive,
impressively-engineered laptops that the world has ever seen - there's
simply nothing quite as slick out there.
Even though it combines the portability of Apple's MacBook Air with the Retina MacBook Pro's
high pixel-density Retina display, the new MacBook doesn't resemble
either product line – or Apple's older, polycarbonate white MacBook of
the same name, for that matter.
Instead, it feels like an entirely new species of otherworldly laptop that has more in common with an iPad Air than a ThinkPad. Flip open the lid, and you're transported into the best-looking OS X Yosemite playground yet - one that goes wherever you go.
But it's far from perfect: the new MacBook's sole USB Type-C port and moderately-powered Intel Core M
processor mean that many of this playground's games are off-limits, and
while some will find its unique keyboard more fun than a revolving
roundabout, it will make others sick with frustration.
Divisive and sickly sweet, the new MacBook is the notebook equivalent of Marmite.
Personally, I love the stuff (and like the new MacBook a lot), but
whether it's for you depends on how much you're prepared to compromise.

On the catwalk

Two
qualities stand out above all else when it comes to the new MacBook:
thin and lightweight. Apple has managed to squeeze its components into
an incredible aluminium body that measures just 0.35cm at its thinnest
point and 1.31cm at its thickest.
Its thinness is in part due to
Intel's fanless Core M CPU, which is passively cooled and runs whisper
quiet. There's no fan inside, which enabled Apple's engineers to make
its chassis slimmer. The new MacBook is an ideal option if you're
frequently sharing a room with light sleepers - particularly compared to
noisier, fan-based notebooks sporting Intel's Core-series chips.
Another
factor that's helped Apple achieve the new MacBook's svelte dimensions
is its dramatically thinner keyboard, which uses an Apple-designed
butterfly mechanism instead of a traditional scissor type underneath the
keys.
And while we're on the topic of thin, the new MacBook's
bezel is slimmer than ones on previous MacBooks and is complemented by a
matte strip along the bottom that bears the MacBook logo. It's
available in three colors: Space Grey, Silver and Gold.

Cost and competition

Everything
about the new MacBook's design screams premium, which is what you're
shelling out for at the end of the day - you can almost forget what's
housed inside.
Of course, we've been here before. The original
MacBook Air, which was more portable than other notebooks at the time
but came with fewer ports, cost an arm and a leg when it first came out -
and history has repeated itself with the new MacBook.
Starting at
£1,049 (US$1,299 or AUS$1,799), the entry-level MacBook comes with
256GB of flash storage and is powered by a 1.1GHz (Turbo Boost to
2.4GHz) dual-core Intel Core M flash storage, 8GB of RAM and Intel HD
Graphics 5300. Rising to £1,299 (US$1,599 or AUS$2,199), the top-end
model comes with a slightly faster 1.2GHz chip (Turbo Boost up to
2.6GHz) and 512GB flash storage.
The
nearest alternative price-wise is Apple's less portable but more
capable 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina that starts at £999 (US$1,299 or
AUS$1,799). That gets you a 2.7GHz (Turbo Boost to 3.1GHz) dual-core
Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, 128GB flash storage and Intel Iris
Graphics 6100.
If you're not too bothered about a Retina display,
the top-end 13-inch MacBook Air costs the same price and comes with a
1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 CPU (Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz), Intel HD
Graphics 6000, 4GB of memory and 256GB flash storage.
If you're in the Windows camp, the number of Core M-powered alternatives are growing all the time. Of those, the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, Asus T300 Chi and Asus UX305
share the new MacBook's traits of slimness and portability. And if you
wait a little longer, it's possible that there may be a new contender in
the shape of the Microsoft Surface Pro 4.

Specifications and features

While
the 13-inch MacBook Air (which weighs 2.96 pounds) never exactly felt
unwieldy in the hand, being almost a pound lighter means that the new
MacBook (2.03 pounds) is on a different level of portability.
The
difference in weight between the 11-inch MacBook Air (2.38 pounds) is
more subtle; while it's noticeable holding each device in a hand, you're
unlikely to tell the difference between the two when they're slung into
a backpack.
Taking a peek at the new MacBook's Windows
8.1-powered contenders, the Asus UX305 (2.64 pounds) and the Yoga 3 Pro
(2.62 pounds) lie somewhere in-between the new MacBook and the 13-inch
MacBook Air. The UX305 wins the gong for being the model with the lowest
height, measuring 12.3mm, followed by the Yoga 3 Pro's 12.8mm.
Although
the new MacBook is a whisker taller than the Yoga 3 Pro at 13.1mm,
that's when measured from the tallest point at the back. Thanks to its
tapered design, it measures just 3.5mm at the front and is easy to open
with one hand thanks to a cutaway at the front.
At 280 x 197 x
13.1 mm (W x D x H), the new MacBook has the smallest footprint of the
three, versus the UX305 (324 x 226 x 12.3), Yoga 3 Pro (330 x 228 x
12.8) and 13-inch MacBook Air (325 x 227 x 17mm), making it the clear
winner if you're a frequent traveller requiring that inch or two of
extra space on the plane or train.
Here is the configuration of the review model supplied to TechRadar:

Wave
goodbye to full-size USB 2.0 ports, and the MagSafe adapters that
juiced Apple's old MacBooks, because both have been replaced with a
single USB Type-C port on the new MacBook's left-hand edge. The only
other port is a headphone jack on the right-hand side.
That's
right: there are no other USB ports or video outputs to be found -
including Apple's own Thunderbolt port. The absence of MagSafe is also
disappointing. It was nice to know that you could wrap your leg around
the power chord without sending your MacBook flying into the air.
Unlike
MagSafe, which came out easily (which was the whole point), the USB
Type-C connector feels uncharacteristically snug. If we're scraping the
barrel to look for a positive, using the MagSafe adapter with the cord
at full length meant that it had a tendency to fall out, whereas once a
USB-C charger is inserted, it's rock solid. Plus, like Apple's Lightning
connector it works both ways around.
Oh, forget it: let's hope a USB Type-C MagSafe adapter is invented soon.
On
a practical level, the change to USB Type-C is the bigger issue as it
means that you'll have to connect USB peripherals and monitors using a
USB Type-C adapter, which Apple and other vendors supply. You can pick
up a USB-C-to-USB-A adapter or a Multi-port adapter that lets you
connect another USB-C device, a USB-A device and VGA or HDMI-equipped
external monitor.
For writing this review, I used a USB Type-C
Multi-port adapter with a VGA connection to hook up a 1080p monitor,
inserting a USB mouse into the empty USB-A slot and hooked up the USB-C
power supply to complete the adapter's trio of connections.
Did
it annoy me? Well - not really. It felt tidy and practical and
certainly wouldn't prove a dealbreaker to buying a new MacBook. Of
course MagSafe would be better, as would more ports, but it wasn't quite
the hair-tearing experience I was expecting. The obvious drawback is
that the adapters aren't free.
If you're thinking about prying the
new MacBook open and switching that pesky USB-Type C port for the old
traditional one, well - you can't. Sorry. In fact, the whole device is
incredibly difficult to upgrade, as the guys at iFixit found out in
their teardown, rating the new MacBook a measly 1 out of 10 for upgradability.

Bundled software

One
of the positives of buying any MacBook is that it comes with a slew of
free Apple software, most of which is of an excellent quality and far
from the bloatware your might run into on Windows machines - and Apple's
apps look even better on the new MacBook thanks to its high-resolution
display.
It currently ships with OS X Yosemite,
undoubtedly the prettiest version of OS X yet - and future upgrades are
bound to be free. The next version of Apple's desktop operating system,
called OS X 10.11 El Capitan,
has now been unveiled. The update will once again be free for existing
OS X users when it's released i the fall. The update brings a number of
new features and under-the-hood peformance improvements, the latter of
which will be more than welcome to owners of Apple's new MacBook.
Plus,
Apple's Mac App Store has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years,
proving an excellent resource with frequent recommendations on apps in
multiple categories - such as Games, Productivity, Writing, Navigation
and more. Here's every app you'll find upon booting up a New MacBook for
the first time:

iPhoto

iMovie

GarageBand

Pages

Numbers

Keynote

Maps

iBooks

Safari

Mail

Facetime

Messages

Calendar

Contacts

Time Machine

Photo Booth

Mac App Store

iTunes

Game Centre

Preview

Notes

Reminders

Performance and benchmarks

The
new MacBook's Intel Core M CPU is adequate for handling daily computing
tasks - such as browsing the internet, streaming audio and 1080p video
and multi-tasking with several browsers open with up to 10 to 15 tabs
each. It can't quite match the power of Intel's Core i3, i5 and i7
processors, but it does allow the new MacBook to run silently. Plus,
it's mostly cool with the exception of a section along the right-hand
side of the base that occasionally gets hot under heavy load.
You
certainly won't be able to escape the odd bit of slowdown when you start
to run 10 or more apps in addition to a ton of browser tabs. After that
point, I would find that tasks such as clicking on Google Drive to open
its preferences pane, or moving a Firefox window to a different monitor
can cause apps to fill with white or black color and freeze,
motionless, before springing back into life.
I
actually found that, when using it from day-to-day, the new MacBook
felt more responsive overall than my 2014 MacBook Air, which is likely
down to it having 8GB of RAM, rather than the MacBook Air's 4GB. On the
other hand, tasks that required the MacBook to do any sort of heavy
lifting, such as using Gimp to scale the 60MB (or so) images that I took
for this review up or down, took anything from 10 to 15 seconds longer
than the Air.
Given that editing images is a vital but infrequent
task that I need to carry out, the longer scaling and export times were
well worth the trade off to get the new MacBook's svelte build and
impressive display.
Plus, when we recently tested Mac OS X 10.11
El Capitan on the latest MacBook Air under the El Capitan Public Beta 3
release compared to Yosemite, we found it to perform much better. So,
you should have an all-round much smoother MacBook come the availability
of Apple's next operating system in October.

But
make no bones about it: the new MacBook is no powerhouse, and that's
reflected in the benchmarks. With a Geekbench 3 score of 4,423 on the
Multi-Core test, its CPU came out 46% slower than the dual-core 2.7GHz
Core i5 chip in the early 2015 Retina MacBook Pro.
While
that may not come as a huge shock, it was also soundly beaten by the
top-end 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air models from earlier this year, which
attracted an average Geekbench user score of 8,947 and 6,828,
respectively. If you're looking to use a MacBook for regularly editing
image files or editing or converting video, those MacBook Airs both cost
less than the new MacBook and would be far more suitable while
remaining plenty portable.
The new MacBook's graphical grunt was
nowhere to be found due to the inclusion of Intel's integrated graphics.
Both Batman: Arkham City and Tomb Raider mustered low frames per second
scores that would make either game unplayable.

Display

Here
it is: the highlight of the new MacBook. The display is one of the best
I've seen on a notebook, with incredibly rich colors and excellent
170-degree viewing angles.
Measured with our X-Rite colorimeter,
it notched up a brightness level of 375.15cd/m2, which easily proved
bright enough to see indoors and was just about good enough to read
websites in bright sunlight too - even if videos were a little harder to
follow.
Elsewhere, the MacBook produced decent black levels of
0.33 cd/m2 black levels, with color accuracy standing at 91.3% of the
sRGB color gamut. While it's not quite high enough for media
professionals, you probably won't notice the difference. The display's
inky blacks and bold colours make text and images 'pop' on the
impressive display - and once you've seen it, it's so, so hard to go
back to a MacBook Air.
There's
another advantage to that 2,304 x 1,440 pixel-resolution display: you
can scale it up to get more desktop space and go far beyond Apple's
default scaled resolutions.
By adding a custom resolution, I
managed to soar all the way up to 1,920 x 1,080 in High-DPI mode using
SwitchResX, which allowed me to see the same amount of spreadsheet rows
and columns as a 27-inch monitor. Sure the text was tiny, but I could
still make out the numbers and edit the spreadsheet without any trouble.
I
might not be doing it all the time, but compared to my old setup, which
was an 11-inch MacBook AIr connected to a portable USB DisplayLink
monitor, I now have enough desktop real-estate to switch to see more on
the screen at the same time. Sure, that's been possible on
high-resolution Windows and Apple machines for some time, but having all
that desktop space is even more impressive on a titchy 12.1-inch
machine as thin as a pencil.
The
new MacBook's stereo speakers are one the of the surprising highlights
of the new MacBook. It's incredible what Apple has managed to do in that
department. Located on the top of the base under the bezel, they're
pleasingly punchy with good mid-range tones, even if the bass is
predictably lacking. They're loud, too, for the size - and sound far
better than the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air's comparitively tinny
speakers.
The
new MacBook uses a new Force Touch trackpad that adds an extra click
using haptic feedback. That means there's no mechanical construction
under the trackpad, instead using haptic feedback to let you indicate
where abouts on the trackpad the click takes place.
Initially I
found that the larger trackpad size actually made me accidentally miss
the right-click zone more often than I did on the 11-inch MacBook Air
(which was never). However, after some practice I soon got used to the
larger trackpad, which has tons of potential once developers get to
grips with Yosemite's Force Touch Trackpad API (or application
programming interface).
The new MacBook has good, but not
excellent battery life, ekeing out 7 hours and 5 minutes from its 39.7Wr
battery on our looping video test over Wi-Fi. That's not quite
post-Haswell MacBook Air levels of battery life longevity, but it isn't
far off Apple's older Ivy Bridge models. Still, that Retina display has
to draw oodles of power from somewhere, and if you need the best battery
life in a MacBook you can get, the new MacBook is not the way to go.

Keys to the heart

Apple
has completely redesigned the new MacBook's keyboard, which now uses a
new Butterfly hinge rather than the scissor switch under each key. The
keys are still backlit, only now they have individual lighting zones
that prevents light from bleeding between the keys - and you get fewer
crumbs dropped between them, too.
The changes make the keyboard by
far the most divisive feature of the new MacBook - and it took me a
week to get fully used to it after using an 11-inch MacBook Air for five
years.
Initially I couldn't quite type as fast as I could on the
MacBook Air, but the reduced amount of pressure needed to make each key
actuate makes the New MacBook's keyboard slightly more comfortable for
typing on for hours at a time. Like me, once you get used to it, you'll
find yourself flying.

Verdict

The New MacBook is the
future, but it isn't for everyone just yet. The lack of USB ports and
the need to buy an adapter (if you have peripherals and a monitor) will
likely be the first dealbreaker, followed by its price. If you're still
onboard after those potential pitfalls, the new MacBook is one of the
most luxurious, compact and fun notebooks to use today.

We liked

After
witnessing the Retina MacBook Pro's display, it was always likely that
the new MacBook would have a stunning display - and it doesn't
disappoint. Great viewing angles and bold colors make it one of the best
we've seen in a laptop. It's all part of a brilliantly portable package
that's the closest a laptop has come yet to offering the portability of
a tablet (well, an iPad).
The new MacBook's speakers gave
surprisingly full-bodied sound that won't shake the room but make for a
far more pleasant listening experience than Apple's previous MacBook Air
or MacBook Pro models. While many will sit on the fence when it comes
to the keyboard, my experience with it only got better in time - and I
ended up preferring it to the MacBook Air's after almost two weeks.
It's a similar scenario with the Force Touch Trackpad, which felt a little alien at first but became more comfortable over time.

We disliked

fThe
new MacBook is far from a monster under the hood. However, if you can
get over the fact that it's designed for anything from browsing the
internet to light image editing, streaming video and music to other
light computing tasks, it should perform OK for what you want it to do.
Bear
in mind that you will need to pay for at least one of several USB
Type-C adapters out there to use your existing peripherals and monitors.
Some say that's just the price to pay for being an early adopter, but
it could be hard for you to stomach considering its already high
starting cost.

Final verdict

The decision of whether you
should buy a new MacBook is a simple one: does it play to your
strengths? Perhaps you need the lightest and most portable OS X machine
out there today, one with good battery life. Maybe you appreciate an
incredible, vibrant display that's equally as good at rendering your
crisp documents as it is displaying the same amount of a spreadsheet as a
24-inch monitor.
Maybe, just maybe, you travel a lot and play
music out of your laptop's speakers. But - and it's a big but - you need
to be prepared to put up with its pitfalls. Don't expect to crunch
through major mulittasking without slowing down. And you may end up
merely coping with its keyboard rather than falling in love with it.
You'll definitely have to put up with at least one adapter if you want
to use any peripherals or an external monitor.
Like in any
relationship, the one between you and your MacBook will be frought with
compromises. But if it's meant to be, then you will be prepared to make
them. If you're not, you can always take it back to the Apple store to
save yourself a messy divorce. In other words: if possible, try before
you buy.

Best printer

What's
the best printer to buy? All-purpose printers are a booming market, and
you're spoilt for choice, so here's our pick of the best printers on
the market right now.
In choosing the best printer your first
decision is whether to go for a standard printer, or a multi-function
device which includes a scanner and which can also work as a standalone
copier.
These aren't much larger than regular printers, but
they're a whole lot more versatile, especially when you need to keep a
copy of a letter, a bill or any other important document, so our first
list includes the best inkjet printers and best multi-function devices.
You
should also think carefully about whether to invest in an inkjet or a
laser. Lasers are usually associated with office environments, where
they produce sharp, smudge-free printouts quickly, quietly and
economically, but this can be just as useful at home or in a home
office.
And don't imagine that mono laser printers are the only
option - colour laser printers are now very affordable, and you can even
get get multi-function laser printers, too. So we've also come up with a
list of the best laser printers, and not just for office users with
budgets to burn, but home users looking for value, quality, compactness
and ease of use.
So let's firstly look at the best inkjet printers around before looking at the best laser printers.

Best injet printers

1. Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630 review

The
WorkForce Pro WF-4630 is a solid printer for small businesses and
workgroups given its fast print speeds, solid print qualities and remote
printing and scanning capabilities. Using the larger XL print
cartridges, the WF-4630 delivers economical print costs that rival laser
printers.Read the full review: Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630

2. Epson WorkForce WF-100

Great
for the traveling professional or someone who needs a small printer for
occasional use. Not for those looking for a heavy duty printer or for
someone who cares about high image quality.Read the full review: Epson WorkForce WF-100

3. HP OfficeJet Pro 6830 e-All-in-One

A
very quick colour all-in-one bristling with print, copy, scan and
mobile printing options the Officejet Pro 6830 is also very affordable,
especially if you opt for the pay-per-page Instant Ink service.Read the full review: HP OfficeJet Pro 6830 e-All-in-One

4. Epson WorkForce WF-2660

Though
some of its mobile and wireless features don't always work as well as
advertised, the Epson WF-2660 all-in-one still offers a good balance
between print quality, features and price.Read the full review: Epson WorkForce WF-2660

5. Canon Pixma MG7150

An affordable all-in-one photo printer with Wi-Fi connectivity and a touchscreen

If
you're looking for a great all-round printer which doesn't skimp on
print quality for your photographs, then I don't think you will be
disappointed by what the MG7150 has to offer.
While it's certainly
more expensive than some of the cheap two in one printers you can pick
up, it's not a bad price for something which produces high quality
prints, especially if you only need to print at A4 or below.Read the full review: Canon Pixma MG7150

6. Brother MFC-J4620DW

The
Brother MFC-J4620DW packs some features missing from similarly-priced
models in the company's range. They include A4 and A3 scanning, copying
and faxing, in addition to the ability to connect directly to a range of
cloud-based services such as OneDrive and Dropbox.
One of its
bigger plus points versus rival printers is its simple operation. It has
a big, tilting 9.3cm touchscreen, a range of connection options and
supports double-sided scanning. With a mixture of ivory and black, the
MFC-J4620DW is less bulky than some of its peers without skimping on
performance: printing goes up to 6,000 x 1,200 dpi with speeds of up to
35ppm in mono and 28ppm in colour.Read the full review: Brother MFC-J4620DW

7. Brother DCP-J4120DW

Brother's entry-level A3 printer is a good bet for the occasional big print

You
might not always want to print on A3 paper, but when you do, many
conventional inkjet printers aren't up to the task. Brother's
DCP-J4120DW can, in addition to being able to do duplex and colour
printing without breaking the bank.
Currently on sale for a fair
chunk below its official £120 price tag, this printer comes with an
impressive feature set. It can scan, copy, connect via Wi-Fi and print
directly from SD, SDHC, SDXC, memory sticks and flash drives. Its
touchscreen might not be the best, but it's a quiet, fast and consistent
little performer that's well worthy of your attention.Read the full review: Brother DCP-J4120DW

8. HP Envy 5540 All-in-One printer

We've
come to expect simple setup and operation from Envy printers, and this
one is no exception. It's quiet, packs in a lot of features and delivers
excellent print quality, especially on photo paper. We particularly
like the ability to use smartphones as well as computers, and to connect
wirelessly without a router.Read the full review: HP Envy 5540 All-in-One printer

9. Epson PictureMate PM-400

Once
you've got the PM-400 up and running, you'll have a ton of fun running
off image after image. Although the print quality won't win any awards
for print quality, you'll be proud to hang any of its prints on your
wall or sit them on your desk.
The PM-400 is a delight to look at
– not that this should heavily factor into which printer you should
buy. It's got a pretty bone white frame that tucks away neatly, and the
4-pound printer can be easily transported wherever you go. Read the full review: Epson PictureMate PM-400

10. HP DeskJet 1010

You
won't get fancy features like wireless printing, duplexing or scanning,
but if you don't need all the frills of an all-in-one printer, the HP
DeskJet 1010 offers solid print performance and quality at an unbeatable
price in a compact package.Read the full review: HP DeskJet 1010 review

Best laser printers

1. HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw

HP
offers plenty of ways to convert digital content to paper with the
M277dw, including Wi-Fi printing, HP ePrint and NFC printing from a
phone or tablet. The M277dw is a versatile, compact printer that's
capable of producing great prints if you can live with some of the
device's limitations.Read the full review: HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw

2. HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M553X

HP
has crammed a lot of features into a surprisingly small space. This
printer connects to every conceivable device either wired or wirelessly,
delivers good running costs, runs quickly and produces stunning prints
even on default settings.Read the full review: HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M553X

3. HP LaserJet Pro MFP M225dw

This laser-powered MFP covers most small business print, scan, copy and even fax needs without breaking the bank.

Small
businesses looking for a print, scan and copy workhorse on a budget
could do a lot worse than the LaserJet Pro MFP M225dw. It's from HP,
it's got a laser engine and a duplexer, plus it looks smart and ticks
most of the connectivity boxes. It does have a few rough edges but it's
cheap to buy, cheap to run and it gets the job done.Read the full review: HP LaserJet Pro MFP M225dw

4. Brother MFC-L2740DW

Brother
has packed an awful lot into the MFC-L2740DW, and it's particularly
well suited to busy offices that need to do a bit of everything on a
range of different devices. Running costs are good, especially for what
is ultimately a budget buy, and while we have a few niggles with the
design and the touchscreen you can't fault the feature list. Brother's
SOHO flagship represents very good value for money.Read the full review: Brother MFC-L2740DW

5. Brother HL-L2300D Mono Laser Printer

The
HL-2300D concentrates on the basics and does them very well. If you
need a printer that's simple, reliable, produces good quality output and
doesn't cost a fortune to run, then the HL-2300D comes highly
recommended.Read the full review: Brother HL-L2300D Mono Laser Printer

Cloud control to Major Tom: NASA's space missions are going 'cloud native'

Introduction and data science

"Hey Curiosity, be a pal and move north 10 metres to look at that big red rock, would ya?"
If the revelation that engineers at NASA's Jet Prolusion Laboratory (JPL) use Alexa
to control its Mars rovers wasn't enough, consider this – its latest
missions are conducted entirely using the cloud. Since adopting AWS eight years ago, data scientists at JPL and NASA have been on their own journey into the unknown, pioneering the exploration of cloud computing in all-new ways.

Curiosity and the cloud

For
the two live Mars rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity, NASA uses the
cloud for mission-critical controls. The rovers' operations are
controlled via applications that sit on the cloud, from downloading
reports on yesterday's movements to uploading manoeuvres for the
following day.
"One of the most common myths is that Mars rovers
are operated by joysticks," said Khawaja Shams, Senior Manager, Software
Development at AWS, but until recently a software engineer at JPL.
Shams was delivering a talk called '‪Inspiring Innovation in the Cloud:
NASA/JPL and Beyond' at AWS reInvent 2015 in Las Vegas.
"That
would be super-nice, but since Earth and Mars are about 100 million
miles apart, it takes seven to 20 minutes to give a rover an instruction
… if you told it to go forward and waited for an acknowledgement, the
rover might already be in a ditch somewhere," he says. The rover works
semi-autonomously, with scientists sending commands up via cloud apps.

Low-cost missions

JPL's use of the cloud
is also about saving money. "Landing on Mars (with Curiosity) was 100
times cheaper than nine years prior by using AWS," says Tom Soderstrom,
‎IT Chief Technology Officer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, about the
2012 mission, which continues to this day. "We streamed 175TB, 80,000
requests per second, it was an amazing performance," he adds. "You all
saw the pictures at the same time we did."

Instant image sharing

How JPL's cloud works is as simple as it is streamlined. "The images go from the Mars rover out to the orbiters, back to the Deep Space Network
then into the JPL data centres," explains Shams. "Data goes from JPL to
S3 (AWS' Simple Storage Service), it's processed by EC2 (Elastic
Compute Cloud, AWS' resizable cloud hosting services) and within seconds
of the data arriving on Earth it gets processed, stored on S3 in JPEG
formats, and is available for everyone to consume almost instantly."
That
even applies to separating stereo images taken by Curiosity (3D photos
help operators give exact navigational instructions to the rover), and
to the automatic stitching together of separate one megapixel images to
create vast five gigapixel panoramas; it's all automated, and it needs
to be.
"We often have less than four hours to react to
information we've just gotten, so it's imperative we produce these
panoramas as quickly as possible," says Shams about how images help the
rovers' operators make snap decisions. He adds that it's all down to the
elastic provisioning and workflow orchestration that the cloud now
allows.

Data science experiments

Thanks
to an internal image search service – indexed inside of DynamoDB – JPL
scientists can now search and query images more freely, but even this
was opened up to developers. API requests can be crafted that build on
top of the database, and can be pulled into third-party apps to reuse.
Examples include the MSL Image Explorer and the Mars Images
app for iOS, which deliver the very latest images from NASA's Mars
rovers by interrogating that same internal image search archive.
"You
can see the images the moment they hit Earth back from Mars," says
Shams. "It's about building platforms and thriving ecosystems that allow
others to build apps for once we've stopped working on them."

Cloud infrastructure and sharing data

Expanding cloud infrastructure

If
NASA pioneered its use of the cloud for image processing and sharing,
it's since extended it to all kinds of other data. First it made thermal
telemetry coming off the Mars rovers, which was until recently being
shared as emails and PowerPoints within JPL, more shareable and dynamic.
"We took it out of static emails and put it on the web with an
elastic compute capacity behind it to provide not just a snapshot, but a
restful website where you could search through several hundred Sols [a
Martian day] worth of data," says Rob Witoff, an ex-JPL data scientist,
and now Director of Coinable.
The next trick was to
cross-reference it with images of exactly where a rover was at the time
of each thermal readout. "In just under 30 minutes we were able to merge
these tools together so that when you click on any data point it will
use the other API and pull that image in, to help engineers to interact
with multiple data sets," adds Witoff.
Now every dataset JPL has
can be almost instantly linked. "It's a modern cloud infrastructure that
can elastically scale and be reused from mission to mission," says
Witoff. "We no longer have to start from scratch for each mission."

The elastic cloud

Two
of NASA's Earth-orbiting satellites – SWOT (Surface Water Ocean
Topography) and NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) – are about
to test NASA's cloud storage capabilities to the maximum. As they search
for and map water and natural hazards respectively, both generate
100Gbps per second of traffic, so over 100TB per day. Over their
lifetime, the data they produce amounts to 1,000 petabytes each.
"How
do you get it from space into a data centre?" asks Soderstrom, adding
that his team are wrestling with that right now. "We think the cloud is
the only way, so all of a sudden cloud computing becomes
mission-critical, both on the storage and on the network."

Sharing data, algorithms and software

JPL's
use of the cloud is also allowing scientists across the globe to
collaborate more easily without having to physically download and store
terabytes of data. "One of the most profound implications of cloud
commuting is that it's enabled us to co-locate large amounts of
scientific data, with virtually limitless amounts of compute capacity
that can be provisioned on-demand," says Shams. JPL is also now using
the cloud to share among scientists preconfigured software complete with
sample data-sets.

The future for NASA's cloud

JPL's
goal is a 'cloud native' mission, one that starts and finishes
completely in the cloud. Its first such missions – both planned for the
2020s – are to Europa (a flagship mission of NASA that will search for signs of life) and the ARM mission (an ambitious proof-of-concept project to redirect an asteroid).
"Eight
years ago we knew that if we could start a mission in the cloud, we'd
be there," says Soderstrom. "We can now re-provision in a weekend what
used to take months," he says about increasing storage capacity for
these cloud-only missions. "The future of enterprise is going to use the
cloud," says Soderstrom. "We're not going to talk about data centres
anymore."

The PC Gamer: Betas are giving PC gamers headaches, but I've found the cure

Introduction

Closed
Betas are so frustrating, especially the ones I'm not in. It's not that
I particularly mind not having access to Overwatch, Blizzard's upcoming
mix of MOBA and FPS, so much as seeing so many people on my Friends
list who do. It's pure childish jealousy, of course, but here's the
thing about childish things that I think we should take a moment to
remember: waaaaaaaaaaah!
Betas in general though are weird. The
basic definition of them has changed so much over the last few years,
going from a trial of a basically finished project to… let me just check
this here… 'absolutely any bloody thing you want it to mean'. It's a
little like how the words Game Of The Year have gone from a single
triumphant moment of note, like a Half-Life 2, to include everything
from Skyrim - allowable - to Two Worlds - laughable.
Originally
the definition was that some site somewhere had maybe, probably said it
was their Game Of The Year, in much the same way that As Seen On TV
doesn't *technically* promise it wasn't on Watchdog's "Things That Will
Explode And Kill Your Cat" segment. Now though, even that thin veneer of
crap-giving has gone to the wayside, with the new definition being "A
Game Of The Year", as in "It came out in 2015."

Beta, not better

With
betas specifically though, the slide has been gradual, beginning with
Google deciding that Gmail was a work-in-progress for many years before
removing the 'beta' flag, and other companies realising - oh, so we can
do whatever we want then? Groovy!
From there it was a slippery but
profitable slope to realising that betas could serve as amazing
marketing, both by releasing them, and withholding them, to build up
that good old consumer waaaaaaaah-factor, with the true nail in the
coffin being the point where people started selling stuff for real money
in their betas. Yes, it's unfinished, but… uh… we need to test the
payment systems. Test. Yes!
There are of course many real-world
uses for them too, like testing server load, and revealing the kind of
problems and balance issues that can only happen when a game moves
outside the hallowed halls of people willing to play it properly, and
into the hands of the enemy.
The catch is that by this point it's
often too late to make sweeping changes. If a combat system in an MMO
sucks in beta or the graphics are terrible, well, spoiler, it's going to
suck in release too, because that sucker's been baked in far deeper
than beta-users' influence ever reaches.
For that reason, I think
it's time to really shake things up, and break the beta hold over new
games. The problem for the industry is that the updates go the wrong
way. Alpha denotes an unfinished game, beta a complete one ready for
that polishing stage. We need to flip that and take full advantage of
the rest of the Greek alphabet. The new system will start a little like
this.
Alpha: Finished game, just in need of testing.
Beta: Playable, but we're still adding content to it.
Then, we build on it with a set of new stages.
Gamma: Open, or at least not too tightly closed beta, as now.
Delta:
Game is finished enough for Twitch streamers and YouTubers to help us
market it, but not for anyone who might not be so excited about it that
their socks routinely fly off.
Epsilon: Game not ready to be seen by human eyes, so exclusive to Hitbox.
Zeta:
Game lacks a few key features like characters and music and graphics
and controller input. Yet oddly, the shop is fully functional.
Eta:
Game is only half-finished. Entire team dead from crunch, considering
farting it onto Steam in its current form in the hope people will buy it
anyway. Worked for Assassin's Creed: Unity.
Theta: Game is at
that stage where everyone is desperately hoping it's fun, but all the
pieces haven't come together yet and late nights are spent drinking hard
spirits and praying to Chet, pagan lord of programming, that things
aren't as bad as they seem.
Iota: Game only exists as a YouTube or
E3 or Kickstarter demo video that everyone involved is now desperately
hoping they can turn into an actual game on computers that exist.
Kappa:
Game currently consists of the designer's notebook, with the art team
regularly asking whether or not the scribbled boobies are there out of
boredom, or character design notes.
Each of these stages is of
course fully marketable by the right developer, as proven by Star
Citizen. Note to the legion of humourless space captains with skins
thinner than a soap bubble: That was just a joke, relax. The additional
flexibility however means that any player knows exactly what they're
getting into when they pay or download the beta, allowing them to get in
at the right stage to influence development.
If
a game catches your attention in the upsilon phase for instance,
there's probably enough to get a job at the developer in QA, work your
way up the ranks, take over the company, and then personally ensure it
has the resources that it needs. This is also, I suspect, the only way
we're ever going to see Michel Ancel's Beyond Good And Evil 2.
It
might sound ridiculous, but then it wasn't that long ago that people
were laughing at the idea of DLC horse armour and the idea of Worms
Reloaded: Game Of The Year Edition not being forced by law to specify
that said year was - at best - 1999, for the last game in the series
worth giving the faintest damn about.
Now though, we're at the
point where games can sell everything from in-game currency to sexy
underpants (though points to Vindictus for the term 'inner armour')
without anyone batting so much as an eye. You redefine the words, you
change peoples' feelings. We just need to redefine Beta to something
more sensible, or at the very least, give me access to all of them so
that I'm too busy playing new games to continue caring about semantics.
The rest of you can come too, if you like.

Updated: 27 best PC games: the must-play titles you can't afford to miss

Introduction

The PC is either making a comeback or never went away in the first place, depending on who you ask.
Whichever camp you're in, a deluge of triple-A titles, virtual reality and (whisper it) decent console ports make picking the PC over the Xbox One or PS4
a no-brainer. Thanks to the popularity of Valve's Steam platform,
finding and downloading the best PC games is easier than ever before.
Whether
you're a mouse-and-keyboard diehard who mutters "boom, headshot!" in
their sleep, or a joypad-wielding adrenaline junkie, the PC has no
shortage of blockbuster and indie titles to help you waste away the
hours.
We've rounded up the best PC games out there today. If you don't agree, let us know in the comments below..

PC games on our radar

XCOM 2

Following
up from 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which reimagined the 1994 cult
classic UFO: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2 is shaping up to deliver everything
we could want in a sequel. Bigger, deeper, faster and even easier on the
eyes, the turn-based tactics game takes place 20 years after its
predecessor. It pits you in control of the Avenger, a converted alien
ship that serves as your mobile base of operations used to devise
strategy and execute fight plans against otherworldly enemies. With a
greater focus of stealth, more intelligent alien AI and deeper
customization options, XCOM 2 is one to watch for the discerning
tactician.Release date: February 5, 2016YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RonqT9ZWLdk

Torment: Tides of Numanera

If
Pillars of Eternity (which currently sits fourth in our list of Best PC
Games) whet your appetite for old-school RPGs, Torment: Tides of
Numenera looks set to continue the nostalgia-fest. The spiritual
successor to Planescape Tournament (it's being written by that game's
designer, Colin McComb), Tides broke the then-Kickstarter record for
surpassing a million dollars in funding in just seven hours. Based on
the pen-and-paper game Numenera, which is set a billion years in the
future, expect Tides to be heavily story-driven and terrific to look at
thanks to its living and breathing environments set in the Ninth World. Expected: 2015YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybqE8FlLrqg

Star Wars: Battlefront

"Next-gen
Star Wars": four words that never fail to get gamers with even the
vaguest interest in George Lucas's universe quivering like an excited
Wookiee. That the studio behind the Star Wars: Battlefront reboot is
Dice, the developer behind the Battlefield series, is even more reason
for celebration. Though it's sensible to be wary of the scripted (albeit
stunning) gameplay footage shown off at E3, players who dived into the
recent Closed Alpha have reported a game very close in feeling to
Battlefield 4 - though much faster-paced - and with lightsabers.
Obviously.Release date: November 17, 2015YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXU5k4U8x20

Fallout: 4

Heading to PC and consoles on November 10, Bethesda's Fallout 4 swaps Fallout 3's post-nuclear wasteland for, er, a post-nuclear Boston. Screenshots of the game from E3
featured robots, massive guns, a dodgily rendered dog, jetpacks, and
what appears to be a weapon modding system. Speaking of which, PC
modders are already planning ahead: Fallout 3 mod creator Zealotlee has
announced his intention to import the Rail Rifle into Fallout 4. Sure, Fallout mods are coming to consoles this time around, but it's one of many areas where the PC is going to lead the way.Release date: November 10, 2015YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2XfDggqjzk

Cuphead

Few games are unique these days, but Studio MDHR's charming run and gun title Cuphead
just might be deserving of the label. Featuring a visual art style
borrowed from 1930s Disney cartoons (think Mickey Mouse in Steamboat
Willie), it's a romantic blend of old and new-era entertainment.
Adorable and even a bit disturbing due to its screen-filling bosses
(most of which are drawn with deranged facial expressions), Cuphead has
us thirsty for more.Expected: 2016YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TjUPXAn2Rg

DOOM

Bethesda's
upcoming DOOM reboot is taking id Software's classic FPS back to its
frenetic roots. Shown off at E3, early gameplay footage running on id
Tech 6's game engine was nothing short of gore-tactic. Enemies can be
blown into chunks with the regular assortment of high-powered shotguns,
rifles and laser-powered weapons, and the chainsaw has made a
particularly grusome return.Expected: 2016YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NteAPGprDJk

Unreal Tournament

One
of the most celebrated arena-shooters of all time, Unreal Tournament
brushed Quake 3 aside to claim the online shooter crown back in 1999.
It's remained a firm favourite with FPS fans ever since, leading to a
remake being announced in 2014. Developed in Epic Games' Unreal Engine
4, Unreal Tournament brings back classic weapons including the Flak
Canon, Pulse Rifle and Mini-Gun. The first high-resolution map, Outpost
23, looks nothing short of stunning and is sure to give UT die-hards
m-m-m-m-monster thrills.Expected: Out now (Pre-alpha), Final TBCYouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li0OCzVqjOU

1. Cities: Skylines

Cities:
Skylines is SimCity updated for the modern era, proving a breath of
fresh air for would-be mayors. Its core gameplay lets you dig deep into
the various aspects of running a sprawling virtual city - from economics
to macro and micro management and land planning. But Cities: Skylines
really shines when it comes to mods, which allow you to create custom
maps, assets and tools to share with other online players.

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2. Dragon Age: Inquisition

Dragon
Age: Inquisition places you in the heart of a huge, vibrant world on a
far greater scale than its predecessors, and it does an excellent job of
making you feel in command. Packing in a huge 90 hours (and the rest)
of gameplay into its storyline, Inquisition's smart dialogue, compelling
plot, savvy progression system and massive sandbox world will have you
engrossed for months on end. Think the Elder Scrolls games meets the
Diablo franchise and you're halfway there.

3. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

A
card game from the makers of World of Warcraft, Hearthstone is easy to
learn, but hard to master. Like Blizzard's famous MMO, Hearthstone
combines classes, characters and a bit of tactical luck when throwing
you into battle against computerised or online opponents. Stick with it
and you'll be rewarded by its tactical, deep gameplay. Though available
on iOS and Android, its low system requirements, excellent presentation
and great sound effects mean it's best experienced on the PC.

4. Pillars of Eternity

Pillars
of Eternity is a sprawling RPG in the vein of Baldaur's Gate or Icewind
Dale that combines highly detailed technical combat with hundreds of
hours of gameplay. It has refreshingly low system requirements on the PC
but still looks incredible thanks to its simple but effective art
style, which harks back to those aforementioned isometric fantasy RPGs
of the 2000s. But it's not all about nostalgia: Pillars of Eternity has
enough interesting characters, baddies and clever writing to make it a
modern classic of its own.

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5. Grand Theft Auto V

Grand
Theft Auto V is one of the most anticipated console ports to ever hit
the PC. You probably didn't need telling twice to head back into Los
Santos's hugely detailed and interactive world, but it's ten times more
fun with the PC's richer graphics and smooth 60 frames per second
gameplay. Once you're done with its 31-hour storyline or had your fill
blazing around the city causing chaos, an ever expanding list of GTA V mods - from fine tuning cars or throwing vehicles around with a Gravity Gun - are bound to keep you entertained for some time.

6. Alien: Isolation

Set
15 years after the events of the first Alien film from 1979, Alien:
Isolation is the suspense-packed game that fans of the franchise have
been crying out for. Playing the role of Amanda Ripley, daughter of
Alien protagonist Ellen Ripley, your mission is to track down and
recover the flight recorder of the Nostromo spacecraft from the first
Alien film which has been located aboard the Sevastopol space station.
First and foremost a stealth game, Isolation ramps up the tension by
providing you with minimal weaponry. Its excellent graphics shine on
high-end PCs and clever AI helps ramp up the dread, leaving you to
quiver when turning every corner.

7. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Counter-Strike:
Global Offensive remains a fantastic update to a timeless classic that
continues to live on thanks to its vast online communities. A
well-rounded tactical shooter that builds on the simple Terrorists vs
Counter-Terrorists gameplay mechanics of Counter-Strike 1.6 and
Counter-Strike: Source, CS: GO updates classic maps such as Italy and
Dust while keeping adding new modes in Arms Race and Demolition. Simpler
than Battlefield but more nuanced than the Call of Duty franchise, it's
a shooter for those who like to run, gun and think - if only a little
bit.

8. Far Cry 4

Ubisoft's
latest shooter marks Far Cry's most beautiful outing yet. Its
graphically-rich world is eye-popping on high-end PCs, and you'll see
plenty of it thanks to a 30+ hour-long campaign. Aside from the main
campaign, there are plenty of things to do in Kyrat - from hostage
rescue and assassination missions to escort quests, resource collecting
and, of course, avoiding being killed by bullets or rampaging animals.
Whether you're tearing across the savanna in a rickety car or slinging
grenades around like tennis balls, survival has never been such a blast.

9. FTL: Faster Than Light

FTL
(Faster Than Light) puts you command of running a spaceship and looking
after its crew. Featuring a complex game mechanism that involves
maintaining weapons, engines, shields and other areas, in addition to
tactical combat, FTL can get extremely in-depth over time. Whether
you're ordering your crew to quite literally put out fires on deck in
the heat of battle, or are navigating through asteroid fields, FTL is as
much about long-term progression and satisfaction as it is quick fixes.
Don't let its indie stylings fool you: this is game with untold depth
and scary levels of addictiveness.

10. Grim Fandango Remastered

A
90s classic brought back to life (unlike its main protagonist), Grim
Fandango Remastered is a successful attempt at reviving one of the PC's
best adventure games of all time. Combining writing that matches the
funniest dark comedies with clever puzzles and a still-impressive art
style, Grim Fandango was the most entertaining work of art to take place
in a Mexican setting for years until Breaking Bad came along. Now with
updated graphics, sound and better controls, Manna Calavera's adventure
has never looked so good.

11. Skyrim

Four
years after its initial release, Skyrim is going as strong as ever
thanks to a vast selection of mods and high-resolution texture packs.
Even if you're only interested in playing the vanilla version of the
RPG, it offers more than 100 hours of gameplay.
Throw in three
action packs DLC expansion packs (Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn),
and it lasts even longer. That Skyrim has been compared to graphically
superior but similar RPG blockbuster The Witcher 3 is testament to its
enduring popularity. Step into Skyrim and you too can be an adventurer -
just try not to take an arrow in the knee.

12. DayZ

Originally
launched as an Arma II mod, DayZ is a standalone zombie shooter with a
difference. Not only do you have to mind the undead when wandering
around its sprawling maps, but other online players too. Armed with a
lead pipe and carrying nothing but a backpack and a flashlight, you'll
need wits and guile to survive.
Pretty much the opposite of
adrenaline-packed zombie fests such as Left4Dead, you'll spent half of
the time evading the undead and the other using a shovel to fend off any
humans who are bent on trying to steal your last box of matches. And
take it from us - they will try.

13. Minecraft

The
phrase "build it, and they will come" quite literally rings true when
it comes to Minecraft, the game that has been bought by more than 19
million people. The survival-themed sandbox RPG lets players build their
own worlds or explore others, using the game's multiple block types to
construct anything from small huts to extravagant castles and beyond.
Minecraft's
ultimate appeal revolves around its open-ended nature. Creative types
can build and destroy to their hearts' content, while solo players can
concentrate on not being eaten by the zombie hordes that emerge at
night. A modern-day classic that has spawned its own genre, it's not to
be missed.

14. The Orange Box

The
Orange Box may be showing its age, but it remains a must-play
collection of games - particularly for FPS fans. Half-Life 2,
technically still the most recent game in Valve's franchise (excluding
its Episode 1 and 2 add-ons), remains a modern masterpiece and is famed
for being the first game to intelligently apply physics to its puzzles
and combat set-pieces.
The collection's other titles aren't too
shabby either: Portal takes gravity-based puzzles to the extreme by
equipping the player with the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device
(also known as the Portal Gun), which places two portals for objects to
pass through, while Team Fortress 2 continues to go from
strength-to-strength thanks to the introduction of custom gear and
well-balanced team combat.

15. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Gorgeous
graphics? Check. Huge explorable environments? Check. Enthralling
combat? Of course. The Witcher 3 stands tall as one of the most
ambitious open-world RPGs yet, combining Skyrim's unrestrained epicness
with Grand Theft Auto 5's scale. While the game has been criticised for
its inventory niggles, less-than-enthralling plot and not quite matching
the graphics shown in its promo materials, it's so ambitious and
jam-packed with detail that the package lives up to the hype. Huge,
beautiful and an absolute time-sink, you'll want to scour every inch of
The Witcher 3's glorious world.

16. Project CARS

Project
CARS is a racing simulator that guns for realism without leaving
excitement back in the pit stop, as some racers tend to do. Slightly Mad
Studios' graphically-stunning title has enough car customisation and
handling options to keep the keenest of petrol heads happy. Car types on
show range from F1 to road, retro, kart, Le Mans, GT and more. Throw in
realistic weather effects and driving assistance by Le Mans driver Ben
Collins - formerly BBC Top Gear's Stig - and the smell of burning rubber
will be floating up your nostrils in no time.

17. Elite: Dangerous

Modelled
after the 1984 game Elite, Elite: Dangerous is one of the most
ambitious space sims around. Featuring an in-game galaxy based on the
real Milky Way (how's 400 billion stars for depth?), the ultimate goal
is to advance your rankings to Elite status by levelling up combat,
trading and exploration.
Starting out with a rickety ship and
1,000 credits in your space suit's back pocket, you'll need to turn to
piracy, trading, exploring, mining or bounty hunting to rise through the
intergalactic ranks. Doing so takes time and requires serious graft,
but the experience provides a level of satisfaction that few other
titles can match. And then there's the Oculus Rift...

18. Frozen Cortex

Frozen
Cortex is a tactical future sports game with oodles of depth and heaps
of style. Players take turns to commandeer teams of five robots across
randomly generated maps, scoring points by successfully carrying or
passing the ball to the end line. Tactically demanding and Chess-like in
execution, it can be exhilarating to watch the action unfold as robots
play out defensive or offensive runs depending on their commander's
style of play.
There's more than a shade of American Football to
it, with online bouts providing the biggest thrills as you bluff and
double bluff your way through human opponents to earn new robots (and
new abilities) as you progress. As stylish as it is clever, Frozen
Cortex's art style makes it a particular delight for anyone old enough
to remember the Amiga classic, Speedball 2.

19. Ori and the Blind Forest

Described
as "achingly beautiful" by Unity Engine boss John Riccitiello, Ori and
the Blind Forest borrows its game mechanics from old-school 2D games
such as Metroid and Castlevania while adding a modern twist. If any word
can describe Ori's atmospheric world, it's alive. You'll have to think
fast and use new abilities gained along the way to bash, stop and
manoeuvre your way through its gorgeous locations, and with no automatic
saving system or easy difficulty level, it's no walk in the park. As
satisfying to master as it is to look at, Ori and the Blind Forest will
re-open your eyes to what 2D games still have to offer.

20. Grow Home

Grow
Home is an experimental PC platformer that looks like an "indie" game
but is in fact the latest release from Rayman developer Ubisoft.
Similarly charming thanks to its distinctive 3D art style, you play as
BUD, the game's robot protagonist, whose main job is harvest seeds and
grow a beanstalk-like 'Star Plant' by grabbing its branches and
connecting them to nearby floating islands in the sky.
There's a
fair bit of trial-and-error involved, and while having to climb all the
way back up again after a fall is frustrating, grabbing a passing vine
at the last minute by the tips of your fingers can be equally as
exhilarating. The ability to move BUD's arms and legs independently
helps put you in control - just try not to get them tangled up. Because
you will - a lot.

21. Sunless Sea

A
2D exploration game set on a boat can't be that creepy, right? Wrong.
More gothic than a Cradle of Filth concert, Sunless Sea throws all
manners of joyless themes your way: death, insanity and cannibalism to
name a few. Sailing from port-to-port in the monster-filled underworld
of Fallen London, you'll have to manage fuel and supplies while battling
sentient icebergs, Zee-beasts and other water-dwelling nasties to
remain afloat. Top-notch writing gives Sunless Sea an absorbing
storyline that's up there with history's best text-based adventures.

22. Rocket League

Already
familiar to millions before they've played a played a second of it,
Rocket League turns the age old game of football (or soccer, depending)
on its head. Played with rocket-propelled cars in futuristic low-gravity
environments, the aim is simple: knock the ball into the opposing
team's goal. Doing so is harder said than done because there could be up
to three cars on the opposing team trying to steal the ball off you -
or ram you into submission - at any one time. Gorgeous to look, simple
to learn but difficult to master, Rocket League is the surprise smash
hit of 2015 - and a wonderfully addictive one at that.
Read: 8 real-life footballers in Rocket League: which one are you?

23. Heroes of the Storm

As
inevitable as sandals in summer, Blizzard finally launched its first
MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game in June. Featuring a ton of
characters from Blizzard games such as Warcraft, World of Warcraft and
Starcraft 2, Heroes of the Storm sees two teams of five attempt to
destroy the other's base. When not sounding out enemy units to destroy,
its expansive maps give you room to take on secondary objectives such as
finding skulls or unlocking special siege units to help your team.
Accessible
to newcomers while packing plenty of depth, Heroes' finely balanced
gameplay mechanics, shorter matches (compared to League of Legends) and
ability-based levelling system make it a refreshing alternative to
established MOBA titles and a fine game in its own right.

24. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

The
new Metal Gear, which is likely Hideo Kojima's final game in the
series, is a hugely ambitious title. Its massive open world setting lets
you tackle missions using stealth, but it won't punish you for going in
guns blazing - which is often the most tempting option.
Set nine
years after the events of Ground Zeroes, The Phantom Pain's story
unravels through its main missions and more than 100 Side Ops tasks. The
action is interspersed with gorgeous cutscenes, and while you sometimes
have to decode annoying military-babble to understand what's going on,
TPP's fast pacing and gorgeous Afghanistan settings never make the game
feel like a chore.

25. SOMA

A
gripping horror game in the vein of Amnesia: The Dark Descent (it's
from the same developer), SOMA has its fair share of "NOPE!" moments.
But it's not really about jump scares; the game's most compelling aspect
is its philosophical story arc, which unravels as you encounter a
series of confused robots. Suffering from existential stress, the
decaying machines believe they are human.
The tension builds as
you venture deeper into the underwater research facility that you wake
up aboard, avoiding murderous creatures, solving clever puzzles and
checking voice memos to unravel the mystery. Expertly weaving elements
of survival and psychological Sci-Fi horror, SOMA is a little less
action packed than Alien: Isolation but engages more of the old grey
matter. If that's what you're looking for in a fright-fest, SOMA doesn't
disappoint.

26. Prison Architect

if
you think you've learnt a thing or two about prison life watching films
like The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption over the years,
cuff-em-up Prison Architect lets you put your knowledge to the test.
Playing as wardens, you're tasked with keeping prisoners in check,
preventing riots from boiling over and foiling The Great Escape-style
plots. And yes: it does involve sending men to the electric chair.
Gnarly. Alternatively, a second mode called Escape lets you unleash your
inner Bronson by hatching a plot to lead your fellow inmates to
freedom. (Until you get arrested again, anyway.)

27. Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide

Five
heroes, many Skaven rats. That's the basic premise of Warhammer: End
Times - Vermintide, a hack-and-slash fest that plays - and feels - a lot
like Valve's Left 4 Dead series. With a deep focus on co-operative
gameplay, Vermintide's melee-focused combat, level-based progression
system and random loot make for a refreshing alternative to gunning down
endless hordes of zombies.
Although it's fun attempting to talk
tactics over voice chat with players online, Vermintide is often too
chaotic to try anything other than bashing or shooting the nearest
Skaven between the eyes — and that's fine. From giant Ogre Rats to
stealth Gutter Runners, there's enough variation to keep things
interesting. And if you do start to get get bored, unlike the Skaven,
ratcheting up the difficulty makes sure Vermintide won't get long in the
tooth any time soon.

The future of wearables

There's
always something exciting about a brand-new technology – it's raw and
rarely perfected, but often loaded with seemingly limitless
possibilities. Right now, that about sums up wearable technology – its
part 'Apple Watch'
but also part 'underwhelmed consumers'. In fact, you're as likely to
read an enthusiastic review of the Apple Watch as you are reasons why
you shouldn't care about wearables yet. To many, they're brilliant but
baffling, powerful yet puzzling.
As with any new technology, wearables are surrounded by a busload of market hype. Even market research firm
Gartner says as much. According to its latest yearly Hype Cycle of
Emerging Technologies, wearable tech is right up there, having just
fallen off the Peak of Inflated Expectation and begun the dive into the
Trough of Disillusionment.
But that's not the end of the story – not by a long shot.

Massive money

At
the same time, the potential for wearable technologies almost borders
on the outrageous. For instance, Gartner expects some 25 million
head-mounted displays will be sold by 2018. Rival analysts IDC forecasts
a massive 173% jolt this year in wearable sales from 24.6 to 72.1
million. By 2019, it reckons that number will top 155 million, thanks in
large part to a boom in sub-$100 fitness trackers. UK research firm,
Juniper Research, sees the market for wearables tipping US$80 billion by 2020.
It's
all part of what's being touted as the 'Intelligent Systems' market
that includes everything from wearables to connected cars. IDC has a
dollar amount it thinks this market will be worth by 2019 – a staggering
US$1 trillion
(US$1000 billion). No wonder you've got just about every company on the
planet having a crack at something involving wireless connectivity.

Challenges

But
peel away that hype and wearables still have plenty of work in front of
them to get passed the novelty 'companion' tag. There are two key
issues – one is perfecting the small-scale user interface; the other is
electrical power. No-one is interested in a device that's more
complicated to use than a VCR, nor do they want to carry a car battery
in their pocket.
But possibly even scarier are the reports of
consumers losing interest in their wearable devices – lots of consumers.
Some of those reports are claiming as many as one-third of fitness
tracker owners have downed tools after a few months; others fully one-half of users.
On
the technology front, the reality is we haven't seen a new battery tech
reach commercial maturity since the release of Lithium-polymer well
over a decade ago. But there is real potential on the horizon – Stanford
University's Aluminium-ion battery
is one of the most promising developments this century and could turn
the wearables industry on its ear. A battery that can charge in 60
seconds, recharge over 7500 times and is low-cost? Who wouldn't sign up
to a boxful right now?

Seeing the future

While the Apple Watch
has captured plenty of attention, the horizon is actually full of smart
eyewear – and it's not all about consumers either. There's growing
expectation that business could easily become the future driver of
wearable technology.
For example, German logistics giant DHL carried out a pilot program
in The Netherlands earlier this year in conjunction with Japanese
technology maker Ricoh and German wearable tech company Ubimax. The
program involved providing DHL warehouse staff with smart glasses rather
than the usual hand-held product-picking devices. The result was a 25%
increase in efficiency over the trial period.
And DHL's not alone – US smart glasses maker Vuzix has teamed up with enterprise software maker SAP to create two mobility apps – SAP AR Warehouse Picker and SAP AR Service Technician that work with Vuzix's M100 smart glasses.
The
continued demand for efficiency savings all but assure smart glasses of
becoming a corporate accessory for many industries. In fact, if you're a
warehouse manager or in logistics, we'd be surprised if you weren't
wearing a pair within the next five years.

Second-gen eyewear

The smart glasses landscape has clearly changed in the last couple of years since the initial launch of Google Glass.
While lesser-known names like Vuzix and Ubimax are kicking goals in the
corporate space, some of the biggest brands are also taking positions
to grab a chunk of the market.
Chip maker Intel announced in June
this year it had purchased Canadian-based Recon Instruments, maker of
the sports-focused Recon Jet smart glasses. According to the announcement, the Recon team will now be part of Intel's New Devices Group, developing next-generation head-mounted displays.
And then there are the (so far) unconfirmed reports of Google Glass 2
nearing completion from Google. While the Mountain View company hasn't
yet said anything officially, Ray-Ban and Oakley eyewear maker Luxottica
let it be known its working with Google on version 2.0, which is also
rumoured to have replaced the original Texas Instruments OMAP4430
dual-core CPU with an as-yet-unspecified Intel processor chip.

Headsets heating up

With Facebook flashing the corporate credit card to the tune of US$2 billion to grab hold of Oculus Rift,
there's clearly no shortage of interest in the gaming headset market.
And not surprisingly, old console rivals Sony and Microsoft are set to
crank up the competition, although their plans go way beyond gaming
itself.
Microsoft turned heads earlier this year with the unveiling of HoloLens,
its untethered holographic computer headset that augments your view of
the world with 3D holograms. Like its Kinect sensor, HoloLens has
applications extending well outside of the gaming arena and Microsoft is
keenly promoting it as the ultimate accessory to almost any
application, from Minecraft to its up-coming Windows 10 operating
system, even introducing it into artistic and 3D modelling applications.
Meanwhile, Japanese giant Sony demonstrated its Project Morpheus VR, now named Playstation VR
headset at the recent 2015 E3 gaming and entertainment expo, with the
aim of bringing Oculus-style gameplay to the PS4 console. Sony is free
enough with its basic specs – a full HD (1080p) resolution OLED panel,
capable of up to 120Hz refresh rate and a latency (delay) time down to
18-milliseconds. This most recent second-generation hardware is also
said to have faster and more accurate head-tracking than Sony's original
incarnation. At this stage, however, Sony says we'll have to wait until
2016 before Morpheus hits store shelves.
But Sony has also been busy on the smart glasses front, releasing details on the SmartEyeglass and the clever SmartEyeglass Attach,
the latter able to clip onto any pair of glasses. According to Sony
specs, Attach features a 0.23-inch WVGA (640x400-pixel) display, but
there's no firm release date or pricing details as yet. The developer
version features a display panel is green-screen, 8-bit greyscale and
419x138-pixels, while Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and a 3MP camera
round out the major goodies on-board.

Payment wearables

The
natural focus of much of the wearables market is on 'smart' devices at
the moment, but they could also eventually change the way we gain entry
and pay for goods and services.
One of the leaders in this market
is US entertainment goliath, Disney, which has become an unlikely
pioneer in wearable technology – and on a grand scale. It's using RFID
(radio-frequency identification) wristbands to enable visitor entry into
its resorts and theme parks, even for purchasing services (it gets
linked to your credit card). The battery-powered 'MagicBand' can be
purchased through the Disney Store and includes an array of
customizations from bands to name-engraving. It has been said that
Disney will spend US$1 billion on the whole system by its completion.
In
fact, the corporate mindset in the US is turning in favour of bringing
wearable technology into play. US customer management company Salesforce
released a study
earlier in the year on the intentions of businesses to implement
wearable technology. It found that a third of the near-1500 respondents
already implement wearables in the workplace and of those, 79% believe
the tech either is or will be strategic to their company's future
success.

Workplace wearables

Many
of us use our own smartphones in the workplace. Chances are if you do
and you're at a major company, you're part of a corporate 'bring your own device'
(BYOD) program. But as the financial benefits of wearable tech continue
to attract businesses like a moth to a flame, expect to see this expand
into 'bring your own wearable' (BYOW) programs as well.
There's debate about when it's likely to begin, but we think it's inevitable – and here's why.
Healthcare
is fast becoming one of the major battlegrounds for wearable tech in
the US, where employer-funded health insurance is often a key part of an
employment contract.
Unlike in Australia where the vast majority
of employees cough up for their own insurance, healthcare cover in the
US isn't cheap – but companies are finding ways to reduce their
premiums, including issuing fitness trackers to employees. Jiff is one
of the players in this new enterprise health benefits market and according to Fortune magazine, is already available to some 300,000 US employees including from companies such as beverage maker Red Bull and games developer Activision Blizzard.

What price privacy?

It's part of a growing trend in corporate US where businesses are encouraging employees to join 'wellness' programs,
which can be as specific as taking part in challenges such as agreeing
to drink so much water, eat certain foods or walk so many steps a year
for various incentives.
But while on the surface improved employee
health outcomes and lower corporate healthcare premiums sound like a
win-win, there are growing concerns about the cost to employee and
consumer privacy.
In the US, a PricewaterhouseCoopers study
found that 86% of respondents were concerned wearable technology would
make them vulnerable to security breaches, while 82% also feared an
invasion of privacy (page 41). The reports' authors make the point that
'the more we outfit ourselves with data-gathering devices, the more
exposed we are'.

The real gold isn't hardware

For
while there's an obvious market in smart glasses, watches and fitness
bands, there's possibly an even larger market to consider.
In a
similar way to how network access charges are potentially more valuable
than the smartphone itself and how replacement inks can often cost as
much as the printer, the gold isn't necessarily the wearable hardware,
but in the mountains of data these devices will inevitably generate –
data about your health, your activities, your buying patterns.
In
signing up for social media and other online services, we all tend to
fly by the end-user agreements and privacy policies in a hurry to join,
but the data we leak is valuable. In fact, if we're asking what price
our privacy, it turns out, quite a bit.
The UK's Financial Times in 2013 sighted what it said was 'industry pricing data'
on various bits of consumer information and found that the names, age,
gender and location of 1000 people was worth 50cents - in other words,
next to nothing. But throw in more personal information about specific
health conditions and that information sold for 26 cents per person. It
still sounds like nothing, but start looking at it by population and the
numbers really begin to add up. Back in 2012, business advisory firm
Boston Consulting Group found the value hidden in the personal data of
EU consumers - their 'digital identity' - could 'deliver a €330 billion
annual economic benefit for organisations in Europe by 2020'.

Is your personal data secure?

And
because wearables are still very much a nascent technology, we should
be asking questions about data security as much as privacy. Researchers
from security firm Symantec put together some home-made wireless
scanning devices in 2014 using off-the-shelf components built around
Raspberry Pi computers. Taking these devices out on the road to public
spaces in the US, the researchers not only picked up a range of fitness
trackers being used, they were able to track the individuals wearing
them.
Even worse, they also found rookie data security mistakes such as unencrypted passwords transmitted in plain text.

The bumpy road ahead

There's
no doubt that wearable technology can offer many benefits – from
improved health and lifestyle outcomes for consumers to efficiencies and
cost-savings for business. But as the wearables market now begins
hitting its straps, don't under-estimate the value of data security or
how much your personal data is worth.
Before you sign up to your
next wearable device offering online data collection, make sure you
check the brand's data-use policy and find out as much as you can about
its data security. You might be signing up for more than you bargained
for.